Withinnocence
by Kaeru Soyokaze
Summary: Take a peek within the minds and lives of those involved with the Black Order: the scientists, the Finders, the ENEMIES, the civilians and, of course, the exorcists, old and new. 50 drabbles. Cowritten by Kia and Kaly.
1. Footnote and Disclaimer

Hello again! From the person who invaded the fandoms of Yu Yu Hakusho, Naruto, Furuba, Bleach, and more, I make my reappearance at long last! I sincerely apologize for the lack of updates concerning a certain therapy fic, but that should be getting back on track relatively soon. Curse college and its time-consuming evil!

Anyway. A good friend of mine and I are currently involved in a very long and epic RP which may eventually be reworked into an actual story-- and we decided to immerse you into it slowly. Because yes. There are fan-characters. Who interact with the canon characters. And we would be thrilled if these characters were not treated as Mary Sues or Gary Stus, so we'll see how you take them and go from there.

In short, this is a drabble project with 50 themes selected for characters or pairings. Some are canon. Some are not. Kaly and I will be switching off every other chapter until we reach drabble #50. If this gets good responses, expect to see the actual RP in story format eventually. This is just a taste of it and the characters-- a "slice of life" thing, as it were.

Here's some additional information regarding characters and the basis of the roleplay.

Think Edo. The Earl and his minions have shown up and Allen Walker made his timely appearance. From there, the plot deviates from canon. It is now the aftermath, the Earl having skipped off, leaving the exorcists behind to pick up the pieces. What will they find in the rubble? What awaits them now in a time where the battles will only continue to grow more deadly and the exorcists are needed more than ever?

And now, some of the characters that you'll soon get to know a little better. These are just the bare bones for now.

**Abigail Ainsworth**- A kind-hearted woman who took care of Shae and Kanda during a bad storm. Also the mother of Luca and Dea.  
**Drina**- A little gypsy girl who was found to be Innocence-compatible. She's the newest to the profession and unintentionally unnerves most people by accurately reading their emotions.  
**Mirielle Delacroix**- A young scientist who takes her work very seriously, and can be found scolding her Supervisor for not completing his mountain of paperwork. She has an astonishing memory and eye for detail that makes her skilled at what she does. Prefers to go by the nickname "Miri".  
**Teivel Edison**- A scientist who works for the Black Order, takes notes like a madman and fawns over his pug as if it were his child. Tends to overdo things with his enthusiasm. Doesn't get along with Rabi. Miri's childhood friend. Has an older brother who tends to flirt with anything pretty and animate enough, regardless of gender.  
**Shae Elliott Harper**- a quiet, witty exorcist with a parasitic-type Innocence that can inject her Innocence-laced blood into an enemy or obstruction and destroy it from the inside. Has a past that she generally doesn't speak of. Often the victim of Karma's practical jokes.  
**Hanna Leon**- a therapist with a keen and creative mind hidden behind a gentle smile.  
**Emery Lowe**- A chivalrous Finder who never learned the meaning of "personal space". Deceased.  
**Devon Mayes**- A young Finder who possesses three broken pieces of Innocence that can become golems. Wielder of Yan (fire), Auro (protective bubbles) and Ralla (akuma sensor).  
**Moriah**- A puppy exorcist who can become a giant, slavering black beast when her Innocence is activated. She was known as the Barghest when she roamed Yorkshire until she joined the exorcists.  
**Raphael**- An angelic being who aided Cassidy Wescott during a mission in Gowran, only to disappear shortly after saving her life. He made another appearance in China to help out again, where Allen Walker made a surprising discovery about his true nature.  
**Yossarian-Lang Romanovitch Vandrooghenbroeck the Thirteenth**- A very verbose exorcist who remains convinced that the exorcists are the church's dogs, and whose Innocence can increase or decrease the density of matter. Inadvertently responsible for Moriah obtaining her Innocence.  
**Cassidy Wescott**- A lively farm girl turned exorcist, with an Innocence capable of producing light strong enough to blind and burn. Possesses a crippling fear of the dark.  
**Deanna Wolfe**- A shy and apologetic medic in the Black Order with an unusual appearance. She and her brother were originally Finders until something tragic happened.  
**Lucas Wolfe**- A more confident medic and Dea's twin brother. He and Miri are often the ones keeping Komui from going on a scientific rampage.

Kaly and I own all of these characters (and you'll learn who owns who soon enough) and none of the ones found in the D.Gray-Man manga and anime. That would be Hoshino Katsura. Thank you, kick back your heels, and enjoy the show!

----------

Oh, so sweetly succinct is my Kia, always managing to cover what's needed without a waste of unnecessary space or breath.

Anywho Greetings, bonjour, ciao, konnichiwa and salutations, readers! My name is Kaly, as you might've guessed, the subordinate co-author to these 50 themes.

As my partner has already explained, this is an experiment which _does_ involve a number of fictional characters (all personally owned between us) and, as such, I'd like to request that you _suspend your disbeliefs_. Being female and fictional does not necessarily equal a Sue, nor does fanfiction involving said character types necessarily equal any manner of self-gratifying love fantasy. Read with an open mind and form opinions as you go, judging us not by the genre's forerunners, but for the here and now we're presenting to you.

These drabbles will cover a broad span of criteria in no immediate chronological order. Alongside the various themes, we will be addressing a wide variety of characters (both major and minor, FC and OC) and an equal diversity of emotions.

There will be crack. There will be fluff. There will be tragedy and everything in-between, depending on the subject. Writing styles will be shifted, modified and otherwise played with. Various lengths will happen. Several points of view and different types of introspection will be utilized, and a number of canon pairings will be shamelessly peddled. Seemingly ambiguous details or references in one "story" will be built upon in others, interconnected and interwoven-- in other words, just think of this collection as a fun jigsaw puzzle with some assembly required.

So then... Thank you for tolerating my ramble. Now sit back, relax, and enjoy.


	2. Seriousness Is My Shield

_Theme:_ #69; seriousness is my shield  
_Characters_: Kanda-centric

Kanda Yuu does not smile. It is a simple fact, up there with other bits of indisputable knowledge, such as

1. Rabi is too damned loud.  
2. The bean sprout AKA Allen Walker cries too much.  
3. Komui should not be allowed near any sharp and potentially dangerous objects without a guardian.  
4. As an amendment to the above fact, Komrin mark whatever does not qualify as a guardian, nor will it ever.

Kanda has his reasons for not smiling, of course. For one, smiling means you're happy. As he has learned during his time as an exorcist with the Black Order, "happy" is synonymous with "idiot". Rabi is a prime example of this, as are a few of the other exorcists.

Rinali is an exception, because Kanda knows Komui would not hesitate to unleash every single drill he possesses on him if he even _thinks_ that his sister is stupid.

He contents himself by deciding that Rinali isn't happy _all_ the time, so only acts foolish at certain times.

Kanda is no idiot, and therefore he does not smile. So long as he continues to promise death whenever someone bothers him (he does not make threats or warnings, he _promises_ and he always keeps his promises), no one can get close and any and all attempts to break through the barrier he's so carefully erected around himself have failed.

Glares, sullen silence, stoic expressions, solitude... they are all the perfect shields.

But sometimes the silence rarely lasts. Sometimes his meal is interrupted by the teasing quarrels between two lively exorcists, or the teary pleading of one vampire to not be the one to have to chase down a garbage-spouting fiend who has stolen the muffin basket yet again. Sometimes he can hear Allen and Rinali laughing together, or Miranda's nervous stammers as Bookman asks her a question, all the while slipping her ham under the table for a shamelessly begging puppy.

And sometimes, the only person who is brave enough to sit at his table (other than the energetic lot engaged in other activities) will smile and quietly remark on such things in such a ridiculous manner that a smirk will work its way onto his face-- only to vanish in an instant.

It won't do to have anyone find out that Kanda Yuu _can_ smile, after all.


	3. He's a Pirate

_Theme: _#49: he's a pirate  
_Characters: _Rabi-centric, with Kanda, Allen, and others implied.

How silly and ironic it was that one harmless comment could reduce his brain to stupefaction. If the hazy glow of a dying sun was any measure to go by, he'd been staring out the window for at least an hour now; yet the time had passed in a useless, unimportant blur-- a vacant blink and it was gone. Really, the whole thing was nonsense! For the life of him, he still couldn't understand why it still ghosted through the back of his mind, breathing a foul stench of confusion down his neck until the skin pricked and shivered with little bumps. The mission had ended already. He had no reason to be mulling over something like _that_!

... But, to his immense perplexity, the odd thought persisted.

It had been a cheerful afternoon of smiling skies and giddy cotton-ball clouds, white puffs of nothing scattered for no real purpose but to look pretty and give dreamers something to point at and call silly shapes. The English harbor was bustling with lively sounds as fishermen bartered with merchants, merchants haggled with townsfolk, and townsfolk complained over the staggering inflammation of unfair prices. Fog horns belched in the distance, even if there wasn't the slightest sign of fog to be had; but the atmosphere was plenty to stir a newfound excitement in Rabi's bones.

After a long mission overseas, there was nothing better to reinvigorate the mind... or so he had first believed, pushing through the crowds and happily oblivious to all but the tune he whistled. Only when he felt the soft jolt of a small body did the exorcist take a moment's pause, looking down toward the source of the impact with every intention of a quick apology and hasty getaway.

Unfortunately, the sight of two owlishly giant blue eyes staring back at him was quick to ruin that plan. The owner of those eyes was a small boy with scruffy brown hair and equally stunned young features; judging from the small size and scrawny build, he couldn't have been older than six-- maybe seven... and he was gaping up at the redhead like a startled fish, open mouth forming soundless words until Rabi recognized the good sense to intervene.

"Hey, kid, are you alright?"

A second's pause. The owlish eyes blinked once, twice, and then...

"... Are you a real pirate, Mister?"

Another pause followed-- so long, in fact, that the child's exasperated mother was given enough time to stalk up and snatch her son by the hand, scolding him gently for bothering strangers before they quickly whisked away, back into the crowd. Only when Rabi heard Kanda yelling at him with a distant threat of murder did his legs unlock themselves, turning slowly with a hesitation he could not explain, and leaving the scene with a very new strange thought on his mind. Six words. Six words from the mouth of an innocent kid... and he was outright dumbfounded!

"A pirate, huh?..."

_"N-n-nice to meet you... Mister Pirate..."_

It wasn't the first time he'd been called such a thing, but curiosity had finally gotten the better of him. Musing softly to the sun's final afterglow, Rabi exhaled, running a hand through fire red bangs. Perhaps the matter was worth a bit of researching.

"I guess... we'll just have to see about that."

----

The weather was back to its usual autumn way of things, greeting the dawn hour with pale glows of lavender and gold. A frigid north wind left the air cruel and biting, but the grand stone tower retained a bustling sense of warmth and happy chaos. Headquarters was... a unique place, in that respect; he had never felt an atmosphere that compared to it. Then again, no other place in the world possessed such a jubilee of dysfunction under one roof. The mess hall was just that, in fact: a jubilee of dysfunction, for its raucous breakfast conversations and daily gossip. Zealously cradling a freshly received bowl of corn flakes, Rabi scanned the room for his target-- a task that didn't take the whole of four seconds to accomplish.

... The three foot stack of emptied plates, after all, was enough to catch anyone's attention.

"Hey there, Allen!" Trotting over, he flashed a bright smile and flopped down beside the smaller boy, who miraculously paused in the total annihilation of one very unfortunate lasagna slice to speak a greeting.

"... Good morning!" Returned with equal cheer, but then the white haired boy paused, blinking, as if he sensed the resonant tingle of curiosity. "Er... do you... need something, Rabi? You look kind of... thoughtful."

And thoughtful was a very rare state for Rabi.

"Actually, I do need something... Can I ask you a question?"

"Oh, sure..."

"Do I look like a pirate?"

"... _What?_"

"Do I look like a pirate?" Enunciated more clearly now, with purpose.

"... Yes?"

"Why?"

"... Ah... well..." The white haired boy fidgeted, stabbing at the soon-to-be-victimized lasagna with the tines of a fork. "I guess it's the eye patch, maybe..."

"So then, every guy with an eye patch looks like a pirate?"

"... Um... well... not really..."

Ten minutes and eight plates later, Rabi stalked sullenly from the table with nothing to show for his efforts but an untouched cereal bowl and one very persistent headache; but he refused to be deterred so easily. So what if Allen's watery, people-pleasing affirmations had been a total waste of time? There were plenty of other people to ask. Surely, one of them was bound to have an answer! Once again, the redhead took a sweeping scan of the room, tweasing through the crowd to find a new and more suitable victim.

Rinali would have been a fine choice, had she not been regrettably absent for a purpose that could only be attributed to _something_ devious on Komui's part; whether it was baby sitting the Supervisor's giddy experiments of slogging through a heap of (his) neglected paperwork, Rabi didn't hold his breath to find her. Crowley would have sufficed just as well, if the vampire wasn't crammed in a pink-ruffled apron and scrubbing dishes for Jerry. Asking Bookman such a silly thing was practically _begging_ for a kick in the skull. Trying Miranda would've probably ended with the woman in tearful hysterics... somehow. Come to think of it, maybe there weren't plenty of other choices after all.

...But there _was_ still Kanda Yuu. Considering that only a single brave soul had been daring enough to sit within ten feet of the swordsman's brooding aura (and Rabi still didn't understand the reasoning behind it; they didn't even talk to one another), his dark figure stuck out like a sore thumb. Sensing that some annoyance had come to bother him, the cloud of irritation grew thicker-- and the redhead could have sworn witnessing a vision of his own death to come as cold gray eyes burned through him.

Not that this bothered him in the least, of course, bounding over with a radiant grin.

"Yuu-kun!"

"..."

No response. He could see the knotting tension in Kanda's frame, stiffening the shoulders and clenching the jaw-- but the latter had chosen to ignore him, it seemed, and snarled a soft oath between bites. Again, Rabi was not bothered.

"Hey, Yuu-kun, do I look like a pirate?"

"..." Silence. He took it for an invitation to continue, and did so with cheer and aplomb.

"Ah, come on, Yuu-kun, be a sport! I mean, sure, I've got an eye patch and pierced ears, but I don't have the wooden leg or-"

_SNAP CRACK SPLINTER_ went Kanda's chopsticks, gaze turning murderous.

"Call me that again and you'll_ need_ a wooden leg to replace the one I cut off," he stated calmly, deadpan. "You'll have the full ensemble."

... And Rabi wisely chose to flee.

----

The sun was sagging wearily now, barely able to lift its glowing form above the dark horizon. Thick clouds were somber and dark violet, lined in haloes of paler slate and almost-but-not-quite lavender-- a fitting mood, he thought, to match the day's magnificent failure. Back again to where he'd started, the exorcist rested his elbows across the window sill. It was cool and windy, but the pricking chill was stubbornly ignored. No, there were other things to keep him blissfully distracted. Reaching up to brush an idle finger across his black eye patch, a soft sigh turned to ghostly fog in front of him.

"A pirate, huh?..."

Déjà vu. The same words. The same musing. The same dilemma...

_"R-Rabi! Y-you pirate, t-that's cheating!"_

That was true enough, he decided, thinking it over. Pirates were known to cheat. They were known to steal. They were known to cause chaos and pillage loot, drinking rum and swashing buckles and all sorts of ridiculous things that the redhead suddenly came to realize _didn't sound awful at all_. Blinking at this new epiphany, there was a long pause of rare contemplation.

"Well I'll be damned," he muttered, laughing softly to nothing at all. "...Maybe it's not so bad to be a pirate, after all."

---

OOC from Kia: for the record, the names used for the canon characters will be Rinali Li, Rabi, River, Rhode, Tiki, Aleister Crowley, etc. The RP was far along when we found out the actual names, so please pardon the confusion.


	4. Star stealing Girl

_Theme_: #25; star-stealing girl  
_Characters_: Cassidy-centric, mentions of other characters

When she was four years old, Cassidy Wescott wanted to steal the stars.

She had been sitting on her grandfather's lap out on the front porch at the time, big blue eyes locked onto the vast night sky and the twinkling jewels it displayed. She had originally refused to go outside, terrified of the darkness that had stolen away the sun and the warmth and not able to understand what it was about that absence of light that frightened her so badly.

"Aye, girlie..." Her grandfather had laughed, kneeling to her eye-level and placing a warm hand on her head. "You say you're big enough to milk Delilah all by yourself and you're afraid of the night? Let me tell you something, sweetheart. Your grandpa's gonna show you a miracle."

He grinned now at his granddaughter's awe, patting her cheek. "See that? Up there are all those stars. They're shy, but they heard you were coming outside and they all came out to meet you. Now, if you'd stayed inside, those poor stars would've been so disappointed! Y'see, I've been telling 'em all about you."

"About me?" Cassidy looked wary at this, wriggling in his lap to stare up at him. "What about me?"

"Well, for starters..." The old man chuckled, smoothing back her bangs as she fidgeted. "I told 'em you were a brave girl and a good helper... and that you were just as lonely as the stars were."

"The stars are lonely, Grandpa?"

"Yes, indeed, girlie. Lonelier than anything you could ever imagine."

"But there's so many of them!" Cassidy protested, frustrated at this seeming flaw in his logic.

"They don't speak to the other stars. They want something else. They want to meet new people, yet they're trapped in that big sky and all they can do is shine as bright as they can and chase away the dark so little girls like you will come out to play with them."

"They're stuck up there..." The child gazed at the sky with a new sense of understanding-- and then she nodded to herself. "Hey, Grandpa?"

"Hm?"

"If I steal the stars, will they be able to go where they want to go?"

The farmer almost choked on his laughter, coughing instead. "Maybe so, girlie, but if you take the stars, it's gonna be darker for everyone-- and you wouldn't want that."

Her face clouded over; she thought it had been a _good_ idea! "But--"

"You can't steal things, Cassidy." Again the gnarled hand rested on her head. "The stars have their proper place, just as we do. So long as you need them, they'll always be there. But I'm certain... if you go about life with the same concern for people that you have for those little bright dots in the sky, you'll be able to set free more than just the stars."

Looking back on that night, thirteen years later, Cassidy wondered if her grandfather had somehow known what she was to become in the future.

_It wouldn't surprise me,_ she thought fondly, wrapping a length of gauze around her right hand and working on covering up the painful-looking burn that spanned her entire palm while Rabi automatically scolded her for overdoing it yet again. _Grandpa was always odd like that._

It _was_ ironic, though, that her own Innocence shone just as brightly as a star, the light pulsing in the palm of her hand and burning the flesh when she tried to contain it for too long. True stars, after all, could never be truly restrained. They shone their light for those who needed that comfort and guidance and Cassidy adopted that mind-set when she fought against the Millennium Earl's minions.

She loved people. She loved the ones she fought for, the ones who couldn't be trusted because any of them could be an akuma in disguise. She loved the ones she fought beside, each person a very important part of her life that needed to be protected at all costs-- even Kanda, although she'd never tell him that. (She wanted to live.)

She loved them all and, because of that, she hadn't needed to steal the stars to save them with the gift only those celestial objects possessed. One of them had chosen her and together, they could guide others to safety, drive away the menacing shadows, and do what one little girl had once yearned to do with an entire sky: set those who were imprisoned free. Herself included.

"Hey, Rabi..." She looked at her friend, slipping the glove with the crystalline cross stitched onto the palm into her pocket. A quick glance out the window showed that night had fallen while they had been busy tending their injuries. "Can you help me find the others? I want to show you a miracle."

* * *

OOC: And here we have our first glimpse of Cassidy Wescott, the Black Order's very own farm girl! She's gullible, she's dense, she's reckless, she cheerfully burns her hand whenever she uses her Innocence for too long (AND SHE'S NOT IN LOVE WITH KANDA OR ALLEN, PH34R). You'll see more of her later. Possibly! Maybe! 


End file.
